The last living grandson of the 10th U.S. President John Tyler has died at 96 years old — the end of a link to a bygone era of American history.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler died on Sunday evening, May 25, his family said in a statement to CBS News. His grandfather, who was born in 1790, left the Oval Office more than 179 years ago, after serving from 1841 to 1845, well before the Civil War. President Tyler’s immediate descendants lived into the modern age because of two generations of late second marriages to much younger wives.
John Tyler, a Virginian slave owner and lifelong Democrat, served as the vice president to William Henry Harrison and became president quite unexpectedly after Harrison died suddenly three weeks after his inauguration — the first president to die while in office.
At the time, succession plans weren’t fully established and Tyler was initially hesitant about taking over, according to the National Constitution Center. He took the oath of office in public on April 6, 1841, saying, “I am the President, and I shall be held responsible for my administration.”
John Tyler was married twice and had 15 children — eight children with his first wife, Letitia, who died from a stroke, and then seven more with his second wife, Julia Gardiner Tyler, who was 24 when they married. He fathered most of the second set of children in his 50s and 60s; his last child, a daughter named Pearl, was born when he was 70 years old, according to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Tyler’s 13th child, Lyon, was born when his father was 63 years old. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, who served as president of William and Mary College, also married twice. With his second wife, Sue Ruffin Tyler, he had two sons born in the 1920s, when Lyon was in his 70s, according to Encyclopedia Virginia.
One of those children was Harrison Ruffin Tyler.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler lived in Virginia and co-founded ChemTreat, an industrial water treatment company, in 1968. He loved history and his birthplace, Charles City County, Virginia, his family said, which led to his work preserving both Sherwood Forest, President Tyler’s home, and Fort Pocahontas, a Civil War fortification nearby
“He will be remembered for his considerable charm, generosity and unfailing good humor by all who knew him,” Annique Dunning, executive director of Sherwood Forest, said in a statement.
Cara Tabachnick is a news editor at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at [email protected]
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